Stranded beluga whale removed from French Seine: AFP

The beluga stranded in the Seine River in northern France was rescued early Wednesday in the first phase of an ambitious rescue operation, an AFP journalist said.

After nearly six hours of work, the 800-kilogram whale was lifted from the river by net and crane at around 4:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians.

The beluga, a protected species normally found in cold Arctic waters, will next be loaded onto a refrigerated truck and transported to shore, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary-general of Eure prefecture, said ahead of the rescue operation.

The four-metre whale was sighted more than a week ago en route to Paris and beached about 130 kilometers (80 miles) inland from the English Channel at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s inland movement has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne, 70 kilometers north-west of Paris, and its health had deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But her condition is “satisfactory,” said Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland marine animal park in southern France, Europe’s largest, on Tuesday to the AFP news agency.

A seawater pool at a lock in Ouistreham’s canal harbor has been prepared for the animal, which will spend three days there under surveillance in preparation for release.

The “extraordinary” operation to get him back to sea was not without risk for the whale, which is already weakened and stressed, said Brasseur, part of a Marineland team dispatched alongside NGO Sea Shepherd France to help with the to help rescue.

“It could die now, in handling, while driving or at point B,” she said in Ouistreham.

The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rope rescuers had to try several times between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. to lure the animal into the nets in order to lift it out of the water.

A handful of curious people stayed on the shore all night to watch the operation.